Year of Discovery competition: Seeking smiles on the Trans-Siberian

Allan Little from Bridge of Weir is a runner-up in our travel writing
competition for his piece on the Trans-Siberian Express.

Russians are surprisingly quick with a smile, discovers the writer

By Allan Little

1:46PM GMT 22 Dec 2008

As the train pulled laboriously out of Moscow's Yaroslavsky station, we sat in uncomfortable silence, desperately avoiding each other's eyes. An hour later, as the seventh shot of chilli vodka stung the back of my throat, and with tears of laughter rolling down my face, I couldn't focus well enough to look anyone in the eye. This is the story of when I smiled at Russia and, finally, Russia smiled back.

My experience of Russians as smiley, delightful people was in stark contrast to the many stories I was told when I first discussed my trip, stories warning that Russians weren't the friendliest people on earth. "And you'll never see them smile", I was assured.

And so it was that I left the UK determined to discover the Russian smile. My journey was to take me from Edinburgh to Beijing, travelling by train all the way. Having taken the Eurostar to Brussels I then made my way through Germany and Belarus, to Moscow. From there, I had tickets for the trans-Mongolian train to get me all the way across the vastness of Russia, from Europe to Asia, from West to East.

Boarding Train 56 at Yaroslavsky station, sidling past the strict-looking provodnistas, the legendary Russian carriage attendants, I stepped into my assigned four-berth cabin. My three Russian cabin mates studied me for a few seconds before muttering to themselves and each other in dismay at my obvious lack of Russianness. "Dobryj vechir," I tried. My greeting was met with a wall of silence.

Five minutes into the journey, with my bag stowed under my seat, ignoring my inauspicious start and focused on my quest, I took four cans of Baltika 7 beer from my bag, set them on the small table in front of the window, looked around the cabin and enquired "Piva?"

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With that one act, the walls began to come tumbling down, and before long I witnessed the 1000-watt power of three Russian smiles. Full-face smiles that creased wrinkles into willing eyes, exposed uneven teeth and teased guffaws out of throats. As they pulled out the bottle of evil vodka, my three cabin mates rapidly became my three best mates.

Over the next three train journeys in Russia, over 100 hours of travelling, I was exposed to those smiles, to that same friendliness and openness, again and again. As we collectively tried (and failed) to open the carriage windows, everyone laughed at our failure. When we had to sit for seven, leg-crossing hours without access to a toilet at the Russian border, everyone smiled. When the temperature hit 30 degrees inside the cabin, we all wilted happily together. Even when, and particularly when, we didn't have a word of common language, the Russians I met were quick to smile, quick to make light of any problem.

As I got off the train in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bataar, I reflected on the greatest discovery of my journey so far – the warmth of the Russian smile.